


Bad chemistry

by a_term



Category: Soul Calibur
Genre: Becoming domestic, Chemistry, Explosions, F/F, Victorian era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 19:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13643316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_term/pseuds/a_term
Summary: When immortals have lived for a long time, it becomes difficult to imagine that their peers are changing.





	Bad chemistry

                This was no common enemy, it was a threat beyond all others, it was like nothing she had faced before, it made her shiver under her armour, despite all the protections it afforded, mere speed and skill weren't enough and so she wore every piece of protection under the sun, down to googles, a mask over her mouth and nose and protective runes drawn on her skin. Intellectually, Isabella accepted that she could truly feel fear but facing it wasn't easy, besides her the French woman stood like she had before, having cast aside her fear for a strange and detached eagerness, as if this was all happening to other people and she was just a spectator looking down from an opera balcony. Or, more appropriately, looking down in the arena.

                For the first time in her life Isabella wished that that big, sturdy, thick oaf, Siegfried was here. She'd just tell him that opening that valve would make candy appear, or something. He'd definitely believe it, he'd believed stupider things. She wasn't very comfortable doing it herself with just a dozen meters of steel cable.

                "Can we get further out of the angle of the door?"

                What she meant was to get completely out of the way of the door of the old salvaged armoured cruiser turret the Marine Nationale had so nicely donated to serve as a particularly resilient experiment chamber for Aimée to entertain herself with. It was getting worryingly battered.

                "But I really want to see it first-hand."

                "You told me you expect it to explode. You can make sure it does first and then take a closer look."

                "The other one also blew up when put in contact with water, so this one should as well, its structure and properties shouldn't be too different. Unless it's another of those magical outliers than we can't really predict but the tank didn't feel magical to me nor to you so we should be fine."

                "And it's going to viciously burn just about anything."

                "That should be a given. But we're safe this far away, there is barely a mole of it."

                Isabella grudgingly accepted her dear friend's assessment and pulled the cable. The blast wave washed over her leaving her the tiniest bit ruffled. She let out a weary sigh. The wind kindly took away the no doubt horrific pollution leaving her with a slightly more battered turret. She thanked her past self from a few centuries ago for having kept and maintained that old magical armour and cursed her past self from a week ago for having packed it with her. A piece of gravel from on high bounced off her sallet.

                "That was enlightening."

                "I know you don't mean it," replied a too perceptive Aimée, "You are genuinely interested in this, and it's just healthy awareness of the danger that makes you worried. It's a sign of good mental health."

                Isabella bit back the easy remark that was so simply offered, it meant there was a trap prepared right behind it. Isabella stalled for time by removing all her headgear and Aimée followed, standing by her side, giving her all the precious time she wanted. Isabella decided to walk right in the trap. She had to please her friend after all. And one of the best ways out of an ambush is to attack right in its teeth.

                "What does this say about you then?"

                "It tell me a lot that you are willing to do this with me."

                That wasn't the sort of response she had expected.

                "Not everyone is willing to deal with so many explosions, so, thank you. That's enough excitement for today, chorine pentafluoride explodes just as well as its little brother when put in contact with water. Let's have tea."

                Aimée slipped an armoured arm around Isabella's, she then leaned forward just the right amour to allow herself to look at her eyes from the side, Isabella was just too tall otherwise, her shoulders got in the way, "And peach pie, magical hybrids, the cook made some earlier I believe. We can leave plotting liquid ozone-oxygen phase curves for tomorrow."

                Another highly explosive prospect, tea and peach pie were a lot more to Isabella's taste. She reached behind Aimée's head with her free arm and ruffles loose the hair bun and gorgeous scarlet ringlets cascade around her face and onto the steel below. Heavily armoured, heating up and reddening, Isabella began to understand the plight of the lobster in the pot.

                "Teatime, then. Without having to look out for a murderer."

                "I was amazed that not only did we have a detective on board but that he required our services to identify the methylmercury. It was an amazing coincidence."

                "From experience, if you want to travel peacefully, don't travel with detectives. Or sharp old ladies."

                "Do we count?"

                About six centuries of spinsters exchanged glances.

                "I should think not. There's always a murder, and you'll get snowed in like we were. Speaking of travel, we spent so long investigating that I don't even know what you were doing on that train."

                "I was already investigating for something else, _les emprunts russes_ , I don't think investing in those is well thought out, Russia right now feels like a completely broken mechanism, best to stay out. And I went to Kure to take a look at the Japanese fleet before the crisis boiled over and the war started. I suspect that Japan will win."

                "Russia has been that way for a while."

                "Don't tell me, I know too much about Russia being hostile. And the weather. And thrice-damned stubborn emperors. Russia was more welcoming when we had that ridiculous adventure with, well, the Alexandra family I suppose I should call them." Aimée sighed and resumed. "I miss people from that time, like Ney, he taught me to never trust royalists. Well I'm glad to see that the might of the Russian war machine can easily best its own engine problems."

                "They had to turn around yesterday. Again."

                Aimée sighed. "Russia is an unstable and deeply frustrating mess controlled by a broken system staffed by the inept and corrupt. A microcosm of the world."

                "Hush, enjoy the peace we still have around." As they left the reinforced walls around the experimentation area, Isabella thought to steer her clanking couple to one of the benches in the shade of the garden's trees but she relented, she was too confident in the ability of magic armour to scratch the paint and wrought iron in the worst way possible. She drummed her fingers on her sallet hanging from her belt, it made an appropriately drum-like sound so she stopped. "We have to get changed into something a bit more modern. And less loud."

                "Of course, of course."

                Once on the house's rear terrace, Aimée turned into mist and slipped through her windows into her rooms, a cacophony rang out, presumably caused by an elder vampire slipping out of her armour as a mist. Isabella considered the value of that skill in espionage as she removed her gauntlets on her way to her room.

                Once she had slipped in something more fashionable – Paris-style for the occasion, a bit more revealing than in prudish modern England, and not that she minded a blacksmith's fashion so much but it made for taxing dinner clothes – she took a moment to evaluate the current situation. Aimée's maids came from one of her orphanages, the ancient street urchin clearly felt a need to help others. Aimée glided through them without interacting, as though they weren't there and, further, they clearly weren't used to having even a single guest over. The chemist AL had always had a secretive reputation that was interrupted by a large one-eyed cat jumping in Isabella's luggage.

                The chemist AL always had a secretive reputation that evidently pleased her. People didn't investigate Miss Aluminium Refining and her government clearly liked having it that way. More than that, it was going to be hell to clean those rust and black cat hairs out of that shawl.

                Aimée constantly switched from long periods of evasive and calm viper-tongued arrogance to short bursts of blushing and voluble openness and then back again. More than that, intense tasks, explosions, investigations, seemed to focus her while small talk tired her quickly but, critically, didn't seem to bore her. A steady purr indicated that shawls were definitely in this season.

                It seemed that the girl, no, the polycentenarian woman, had neglected society for too long. She hadn't contacted other immortals, quasi or otherwise, in centuries and had only met the finest of them all by a complete accident, her main interactions with the world were to make things explode in intellectually interesting ways and to predict doom with acceptable accuracy. Clearly a good friend, and perhaps more, ought to introduce her around and make her world a little brighter. Something halfway between meowing and croaking suggested that a brighter world included cats getting more attention, such as petting.

                Isabella left the old ornery beast purring in his shawl and sought out Aimée's bedroom. She found the housekeeper on her way with a tray of tea and pie. She was a sharp, short woman, genuinely short, not just relatively like the rest of the world was. Her hair was parted in two very tight and strict tresses and she had an impressively intimidating stare coming from her brownish green eyes considering her frame. She had decided to wear loose grey and black clothing, the overall effect had her disguised as a knife in a schoolgirl disguise but Isabella couldn't help but think it was spoiled a bit by her rather poor eyesight since she hadn't been spotted yet. She'd have to slip a word in Aimée's ear. Isabella made herself known and commandeered the tray from the startled woman with a snap of her fingers, causing to hover gently behind her. She set out again towards the house's holy of holies. Not the one in the catacombs below.

                Soft humming could be heard through the doors and Isabella let herself in after a single knock. A wave of sorcery washed over her, probed at her then let her though. She found the vampire was leaning against a window's frame, trying to tame her hair into a braid crown, for now all she managed to have was a blood red halo as the sun filtered through it. She looked perfectly unconcerned about wearing nothing but bloomers and a corset but they exposed considerably less than some other outfits Isabella had seen her in. She greeted her with a simple nod and motioned at a nearby chair. Isabella noted the presence of books in the bed while a mannequin had recovered Aimée's panoply and stood guard next to a pile of grimoires.

                Isabella settled on a seat facing the window and had the tray land on what was definitely not a tea table of any kind, it pushed into the carpet a small collection of technical references, experimental notes, – chlorine and fluorine are dangerous, my dear – murder mystery novels – homework, perhaps, considering their last meeting – and a copy of Carmilla, a well-thumbed and unsubtle object and possibly accidental.

                Aimée finally repressed her separatist hair with a short burst of astral power that completed the pattern and tiptoed around the table to sit Isabella's armrest. "You're thinking about something."

                "Most people do most of the time, it's a function of being alive," replied Isabella.

                "When you put your hand over the base of your throat you're thinking about something that bothers you. When the lot of us climbed that tower of souls in the southern Urals you always did that standing before stupid things such as improvised bridge over a lava stream."

                "I suppose I'll have to grant you that." She was more observant than expected. Isabella never really noticed her own tics, few people did.

                "You are worried about my social life."

                "One should be, I'll have to make you travel a little, meet some people you might have known a couple centuries ago. And others you definitely have known. Disappearing like that is rather rude."

                "Sorry, you're right, of course, I don't deal well with people."

                "People in general, you included are social creatures. You need us, at least a little."

                "More than you know. You think it is puppy love."

                Isabella blushed, it was rather uncomfortable, she was supposed to be the knowledgeable one. "I could suspect that."

                "It started as admiration, you managed redemption quite well, I just tried to emulate you," she paused and frowned for a moment, "I'm not sure it's the right word in English, I tried to imitate you. _Tu as fais des émules. Au moins une._ "

                "Well."

                "Then you became a yardstick of sorts. I held you up and came up short, I still do, you are quite tall but I believe I managed to match you in at least a few ways. You were a concept of sorts. A path to being followed, a way to become better. Then I saw you again, trying to become you was enriching in many ways but being with you was now possible. A choice I wouldn't have to make anymore."

                The tea was excellent, the pie was excellent, more importantly they were things she could appreciate without thinking. The dreaded vampire Yma helped herself a little as well, she was terribly close, and warm.

                "But now it's strong and warm, it feels right, like it should," say Aimée with a wan smile an idiot could describe as enigmatic, to anyone with half a grey cell its meaning was as obvious as lightning in the night sky. There was the tiniest speck of peach perched on her blood-red lips. "And please know that we are each about as experienced in these matters as the other. We are, were, spinsters, remember?"

                "You are quite forward." It was even a bit of an understatement, Isabella saw no escape from her prison of a seat, escaping would dislodge that woman and she didn't truly desire that.

                "I have a reason to suspect I have some measure of chance. You never rejected me. Aside from a few rather violent events in the bad old days. You answered my invitation to make explosive chemistry at my home, then you happily invited yourself in my _boudoir_."

                "Decorated with grimoires, magical patterns, amour, swords, halberds and warhammers, proper ones, too, slim and with proper striking heads, not those things Astaroth and Rock used to throw around. I was always impressed they managed to fight with those."

                "I am supposed to be the evasive one. Now, look here, do as your heart tells you."

                Isabella obeyed. Aimée tasted faintly of black tea, bergamot orange and faintly magical peaches. She felt soft, warm and right.

                It finished all too soon. Aimée had acquired a nice, warm, red complexion, Isabella shared it. The shorter woman slipped herself in the other's seat, there wasn't enough room for two but it was the most comfortable spot in world.

                "I am feeling… a little faint and dizzy, perhaps, please allow me." I was rather poor form to ask for permission without mentioning what the demand was for but Isabella let it slip. Aimée laid her head on her shoulder, scarlet and copper and crimson – so close they had so many more colours – hair tickled her ear, long steady breaths spread heat across her chest, a forehead bumped gently against her neck and shared warmth travelled through her shoulder. "But this feels just right."

                Time held still until they realised that the sun was exiting stage west.

                "Oh! Before I forget, your housekeeper seems to have poor eyesight."

                "Little Juliette? She does, just a little bit, she also refused to wear glasses. I believe she likes the way she looks, a lot."

                "Perfectly acceptable. But that's not going to make her eyesight improve, is it?"

                "I am open to your suggestions."

                "We are alchemists, and therefore mistresses of glasswork, aren't we? Something light and unobtrusive that should fit her tastes shouldn't be above us. We'll make her something appropriate."

                "More to the point?"

                "Something thin and sharp like she is, rimless."

                "It'll be tricky from a materials standpoint, it must be light, it can't bend too much. Let me think."

                "Also, your cat has gotten very familiar with my clothes."

                "Oh, he loves clean clothes and luggage, little Antoine-Henri is such a dear."

                "As in Jomini?"

                "Old friends, so many old friends, now I name my cats after them. Did he leave a dead rat for you? Such a sweetheart." Aimée shifted her body until she straddled Isabella's lap and leaned forward to embrace her, Isabella's hands came to a rest on the small of her back, Aimée gently pulled on her lower lip with those little fangs. "Let's stay there until our littlest knife comes and fetches us for dinner, we'll measure her eyesight later."


End file.
